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The Division of Barker is an Australian electoral division in the south-east of
South Australia South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a States and territories of Australia, state in the southern central part of Australia. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories by area, which in ...
. The division was established on 2 October 1903, when South Australia's original single multi-member division was split into seven single-member divisions. It is named for Captain Collet Barker, a British military officer and early explorer, prior to the British Settlement of South Australia, of the southern Mount Lofty Ranges,
Fleurieu Peninsula The Fleurieu Peninsula ( ; locally mainly ) is a peninsula in the Australian state of South Australia located south of the state capital of Adelaide city centre, Adelaide. History Before British colonisation of South Australia, the western s ...
and the region at the mouth of the
Murray River The Murray River (in South Australia: River Murray; Ngarrindjeri language, Ngarrindjeri: ''Millewa'', Yorta Yorta language, Yorta Yorta: ''Dhungala'' or ''Tongala'') is a river in Southeastern Australia. It is List of rivers of Australia, Aust ...
near the Coorong where he died in 1831 whilst on active duty after successfully solo
swimming Swimming is the self-propulsion of a person through water, such as saltwater or freshwater environments, usually for recreation, sport, exercise, or survival. Swimmers achieve locomotion by coordinating limb and body movements to achieve hydrody ...
the channel of water and went
compass A compass is a device that shows the cardinal directions used for navigation and geographic orientation. It commonly consists of a magnetized needle or other element, such as a compass card or compass rose, which can pivot to align itself with No ...
in hand over a sandhill.


Geography

The 63,886 km² seat currently stretches from Morgan in the north to Port MacDonnell in the south, taking in the Murray Mallee, the
Riverland The Riverland is a region of South Australia. It covers an area of along the Murray River, River Murray from where it flows into South Australia from New South Wales and Victoria (Australia), Victoria downstream to Blanchetown, South Australia ...
, the Murraylands and most of the
Barossa Valley The Barossa Valley (Barossa German: ''Barossa Tal'') is a valley in South Australia located northeast of Adelaide city centre. The valley is formed by the North Para River. It is notable as a major list of wine-producing regions, wine-producin ...
, and includes the towns of Barmera, Berri, Bordertown, Coonawarra, Keith, Kingston SE, Loxton, Lucindale, Mannum, Millicent,
Mount Gambier Mount Gambier is the second most populated city in South Australia, with a population of 25,591 as of the 2021 census. The city is located on the slopes of Mount Gambier (volcano), Mount Gambier, a volcano in the south east of the state, about ...
, Murray Bridge, Naracoorte, Penola, Renmark, Robe,
Tailem Bend Tailem Bend (locally, "Tailem") is a rural town in South Australia, south-east of the state capital of Adelaide. It is located on the lower reaches of the River Murray, near where the river flows into Lake Alexandrina (South Australia), Lake Al ...
, Waikerie, and parts of Nuriootpa and Tanunda.


History

Barker is the only one of South Australia's remaining original single member seven divisions, created in 1903, that has never been held by the
Australian Labor Party The Australian Labor Party (ALP), also known as the Labor Party or simply Labor, is the major Centre-left politics, centre-left List of political parties in Australia, political party in Australia and one of two Major party, major parties in Po ...
and is traditionally the safest seat for the
Liberal Party of Australia The Liberal Party of Australia (LP) is the prominent centre-right political party in Australia. It is considered one of the two major parties in Australian politics, the other being the Australian Labor Party (ALP). The Liberal Party was fo ...
in the state. It has been in the hands of the Liberals and its predecessors for its entire existence, except for a six-year period when Country Party MP Archie Cameron held it; however, Cameron joined the United Australia Party, direct forerunner of the Liberals, in 1940. The conservative parties have usually had a secure hold on the seat. This tradition has only been threatened three times. Labor came within 1.2 percent of winning the seat at the 1929 election, and within 1.7 percent of winning the seat at the 1943 election. In the latter election, Barker was left as the only non-Labor seat in South Australia, and indeed the only Coalition seat outside the eastern states. It would be seven decades before the conservatives' hold on Barker would be seriously threatened again. Though it has always covered the state's entire south-east, Barker was historically a hybrid urban-rural seat that extended for some distance into the
Adelaide Adelaide ( , ; ) is the list of Australian capital cities, capital and most populous city of South Australia, as well as the list of cities in Australia by population, fifth-most populous city in Australia. The name "Adelaide" may refer to ei ...
area. Until 1949, only three seats--
Adelaide Adelaide ( , ; ) is the list of Australian capital cities, capital and most populous city of South Australia, as well as the list of cities in Australia by population, fifth-most populous city in Australia. The name "Adelaide" may refer to ei ...
, Boothby and Hindmarsh were based primarily on the capital. For most of the first half-century after Federation, Barker included Glenelg and the
Holdfast Bay Holdfast Bay is a small bay in Gulf St Vincent, next to Adelaide, South Australia. Along its shores lie the local government area of the City of Holdfast Bay and the suburbs of Glenelg and Glenelg North The colonial settlement at Holdfast Ba ...
area, and at times stretched as far as the inner metropolitan suburbs of Keswick and Henley Beach. However, it became an entirely rural seat after parliament was expanded in the redistribution prior to the 1949 election when the new Division of Kingston was created based around Glenelg and the southern suburbs of Adelaide. This made an already safely conservative seat even more so. Barker had always included
Kangaroo Island Kangaroo Island (, ) is Australia's third-largest island, after Tasmania and Melville Island, Northern Territory, Melville Island. It lies in the state of South Australia, southwest of Adelaide. Its closest point to the mainland is Snapper Poi ...
and the connecting
Fleurieu Peninsula The Fleurieu Peninsula ( ; locally mainly ) is a peninsula in the Australian state of South Australia located south of the state capital of Adelaide city centre, Adelaide. History Before British colonisation of South Australia, the western s ...
until parliament was expanded in the redistribution prior to the 1984 election. Exchanged between Barker and Mayo since, Kangaroo Island and the Fleurieu Peninsula have been in Mayo since the redistribution prior to the 2004 election, where the massive redistribution of
Wakefield Wakefield is a cathedral city in West Yorkshire, England located on the River Calder. The city had a population of 109,766 in the 2021 census, up from 99,251 in the 2011 census. The city is the administrative centre of the wider Metropolit ...
, resulting from the abolition of Bonython, saw Barker absorb the
Riverland The Riverland is a region of South Australia. It covers an area of along the Murray River, River Murray from where it flows into South Australia from New South Wales and Victoria (Australia), Victoria downstream to Blanchetown, South Australia ...
from Wakefield. Since 1984, federal electoral division boundaries in Australia have been determined at redistributions by a redistribution committee appointed by the
Australian Electoral Commission The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) is the independent statutory agency of the Australian Government responsible for the management and oversight of Australian federal elections, plebiscites, referendums and some trade union A ...
. Redistributions occur for the boundaries of divisions in a particular state, and they occur every seven years, or sooner if a state's representation entitlement changes or when divisions of a state are malapportioned. The seat's most prominent members have been Cameron, a former leader of the Country Party and later Speaker of the House in the Menzies government, Jim Forbes, a minister in the Menzies, Holt,
Gorton Gorton is an area of Manchester in Greater Manchester, England. It is to the southeast of Manchester city centre. The population at the United Kingdom Census 2011, 2011 census was 36,055. Neighbouring areas include Levenshulme and Openshaw. A ...
and
McMahon McMahon or MacMahon ( or ) may refer to: Places * Division of McMahon, an electorate for the Australian House of Representatives * McMahon, Saskatchewan, a hamlet in Canada * McMahon Line, a boundary between India and China * McMahons Point, a ...
governments, and Ian McLachlan, Minister for Defence from 1996 to 1998 in the
Howard government The Howard government refers to the Government of Australia, federal executive government of Australia led by Prime Minister John Howard between 11 March 1996 and 3 December 2007. It was made up of members of the Liberal Party of Australia, Li ...
.


2016 election

South Australian Senator
Nick Xenophon Nick Xenophon ( Nicholas Xenophou; ; born 29 January 1959) is an Australian lawyer and former politician who was a Australian Senate, Senator for South Australia from 2008 until 2017. As a centrist, populist, independent politician, he twice sh ...
confirmed in December 2014 that by mid-2015 the Nick Xenophon Team (NXT) would announce candidates in all states and territories at the 2016 election, with Xenophon citing the government's ambiguity on the Collins-class submarine replacement project as motivation. ABC psephologist Antony Green's 2016 federal election guide for South Australia stated NXT had a "strong chance of winning lower house seats and three or four Senate seats". A ReachTEL seat-level opinion poll in the safe Liberal seat of Barker of 869 voters conducted by robocall on 20 June during the 2016 election campaign surprisingly found NXT candidate James Stacey leading the Liberals'
Tony Pasin Antony "Tony" Pasin (born 1 October 1977) is an Australian politician. He is a member of the Liberal Party of Australia for the House of Representatives seat of Barker since the 2013 election. Early life Pasin was born in Mount Gambier, Sout ...
52–48 on the two-candidate preferred vote. Seat-level opinion polls in the other two rural Liberal South Australian seats revealed NXT also leading in both
Grey Grey (more frequent in British English) or gray (more frequent in American English) is an intermediate color between black and white. It is a neutral or achromatic color, meaning that it has no chroma. It is the color of a cloud-covered s ...
and Mayo. Election-night counting showed that Stacey was second to Pasin on first preferences, however the indicative two-candidate preferred count had been done between Pasin and Labor candidate Mat O'Brien, which meant there was no early indication of whether Stacey would receive enough preferences to beat Pasin before postal, absentee and provisional votes were counted and preferences distributed in the following two weeks. Ultimately, it was confirmed that Stacey had not only overtaken O'Brien on first preferences, but reduced Pasin's margin in Barker to 4.7 percent—thus making Barker a marginal seat for the first time since Cameron's near-defeat in the 1943 landslide. However, Barker remains a comfortably safe Liberal seat in a "traditional" two-party matchup with Labor; Pasin only suffered a one-percent swing against Labor.


Members


Election results


References


External links


SA boundary map, 2001: AEC

SA boundary map, 1984: Atlas SA
{{DEFAULTSORT:Barker, Division of Electoral divisions of Australia Electoral divisions of Australia in South Australia Constituencies established in 1903 1903 establishments in Australia